


Can't Change His Stripes

by Suaine



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Afterlife, Gen, only mostly dead, punching means love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-17
Updated: 2011-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:12:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suaine/pseuds/Suaine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even dead, Kotetsu is still the same guy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Change His Stripes

It's, uh, a little bit weird, really. His last words should have been something super profound and worthy of a great hero, but what came out instead seems cruel now that he has time to think about it. He could have at least told Bunny to go and fight the good fight for him or something. But damn, those are seriously long eyelashes.

Kotetsu smiles even as the white, warm glow around him dissolves into something that looks suspiciously like the house Tomoe lived in with her parents, back when they were in High School. He rubs the back of his neck, wondering if that's it, the afterlife is just some old memories stitched together like a quilted blanket. He feels ridiculously young, although for some reason he's wearing his hat and his vest, which come to think of it is comfy and very much how he thinks of himself.

The scenario invites him to wander – it's what one does upon discovering oneself dead and in a familiar, yet clearly unreal place. Something about mystical symbolism blah blah. The house is quiet except for a radio playing twenty year old summer hits and he nearly groans, because damn, but that song was annoying when it was relevant and now it's just an eternal ear-worm from which he'll never recover. It feels like late summer or early autumn, cool but with the memory of heat in every surface.

He's not surprised to find her, exactly, the yelp is just a very manly way to say “oh, hey, fancy to meet you here”. Tomoe is younger than he remembers, not in her teens as the house suggests, but maybe about the age when she was pregnant with Kaede, looking radiant in her mismatched socks and her baggy pants. She's got her hair up loosely, a pencil stuck through it almost thoughtlessly. She looks effortlessly beautiful reading a large, leather-bound book that gives off a vague air of knowledge too dense for him to understand. Bunny would probably like it.

“You,” she says, looking at him over the rim of her glasses. “It's a bit early, isn't it?” She is not amused.

Kotetsu does not blush, really. “I didn't have a choice! That thing was going to kill us both and everyone else, I couldn't risk it!”

“Oh, is that right?” She closes the book carefully, not looking at him as she speaks. “You could not have found a way to do this so you would be the one holding the gun? Your friend still had his power, he could easily have dodged out of the way.”

Kotetsu swallows because this is something he remembers – she never liked his more reckless and spontaneous moves. The worst thing is that she's right. Bunny kept telling him that he didn't think things through, that his bad habits would get them in trouble one day. “He could have died,” he says without thinking, because maybe he had thought it through a little and maybe he'd been willing to take the chance but not with Bunny's life.

Tomoe rolls her eyes. “You are such a jerk, you know that?”

Huh? That's kind of insulting to say about the dead. “I did it to save them,” he says, his voice sounding petulant even to his own ears.

Her brow is furrowed with some emotion he can't read, but when she comes close enough to touch, her face lights up with a smile. “You are never going to change and maybe that's why we all love you so much, you big idiot.”

Kotetsu can't really figure out why he thinks about Bunny when she says it, but the flush must be something truly spectacular to behold, because Tomoe is convulsing with laughter. “Hey, now,” he says, arms crossing defiantly, “there is nothing funny about my heroic sacrifice or the total devotion of my adoring fans.”

Tomoe touches his arm to steady herself. “Adoring fans, you mean all two of them? Oh, honey, you're many things, but you are just not star material.”

It stings, a little, even though deep down he knows it's true. He's gotten over the rejection and the petty jealousy, mostly, but that Tomoe would say so to his face is a hard nut to swallow. Being a hero is supposed to be about helping people, about doing the things no one else can do, but sometimes it's just nice to be recognized for it.

“I've been doing better,” he says quietly.

She strains up on tip-toes and gives him a quick kiss on the cheek. He can feel her breath on his skin when she speaks. “I know you have and you've still got a lot of work ahead of you. I've been keeping an eye out for you and my darling girl. It must be hard for you, both of you, and I am sorry that I left before- well, anyway.” She takes a step back and puts her hands on her hips. “Obviously you can't stay here.”

“Uhm,” he says, because what?

“You're early, I told you.”

Kotetsu blinks. And blinks again. “What?”

He died. If he knows anything, it's that a guy doesn't come back from that sort of thing. There aren't any clever ruses or miracles, dead is dead. Not even a NEXT can bring back someone who checked out at the gate. Besides, he's been living on borrowed time – he's sure of it now, feels it in his, well, around where his gut used to be, that the decline of his powers was a sign. He can't go back even if he- okay, so he sort of wants to and the idea that he could makes him shiver with excitement, but it's not that easy.

Is it?

“That's not possible,” he says, but he doesn't sound convinced.

Tomoe rolls her eyes again. She's getting exasperated. It's the kind of thing that leads to bruises in uncomfortable places for him, except, well, dead. He doesn't think astral bodies actually bruise. “Everything is possible,” she says, in full on lecture mode now. “Someone can cover himself in diamonds, someone else can phase his body through sand, read minds or control inanimate objects, you'd think it would be easy to heal a bit of internal bleeding.”

“Our powers don't work that way and you know it,” he says, a little grumpy. She's the one who collected the Hero trading cards and knew every little detail about the heroes of their day. Actually, that might just mean that... maybe...

“Oh get off it,” she says. “No one really knows how these powers work or what a NEXT is truly capable of until they push him to his limit.”

He's a little angry now, because it's not like he wouldn't _try_ if there was a chance. “I can't just wish myself back to life, okay?”

“Why the hell not?” She's yelling at him, barely constraining herself, and there's a world of hurt in her stance. He wonders if maybe she wished herself back, if this is about more than just him.

“I- I don't know. I'm dead, I've got to accept that.”

“Well,” she says, “I really don't.” And then she punches him in the face so hard his world goes black. The last thing he hears are the words “you can live for both of us, you jerk”.

+

He wakes up in a darkish place that smells like smoke and metal. His body is on fire. Okay, not literally on fire, but everything hurts. Dying was totally easier than this. It's like someone stuck him in a bathtub full of acid and ground his bones into paste.

“Ugh,” he says, and as first words go, this might only be marginally better than the thing about the eye-lashes. He's going to have to think of something good.


End file.
